Saturday, 25 April 2015

Tomlinson, George Townley - Fusilier

(No soldier photo available)

10th. Bn. Lancashire Fusiliers,

Died 7 March 1943

Age 32

Early in March 1943 the 10th. Battalion advanced towards Japanese held positions in Rathedaung, in the Arakan sector of the British advance in Burma (now Myanmar) On 6 March, the Japanese staged a counter-attack, which was driven off. In the early hours of 7 March, however, they attacked a platoon of 'B' Company, and the platoon was overrun. Soon the attack became general and the Japanese infiltrated through and around the Battalion and cut off the forward troops. A counter attack by the Battalion led to very heavy opposition and, as casualties were increasing, a gradual withdrawal was ordered. Eight men, including Fusilier George Tomlinson, were killed, with 32 wounded and four missing.

George was the son of Fred and Florence Tomlinson and the husband of Susan. He was 32. He attended St.James' Church and School and played cricket for the Church Institute. Before he enlisted he worked at Messrs. Whitehead's Higher Mill, Rawtenstall. He joined the King's Own(Royal Lancaster Regiment) on November 1941 but later transferred into the Lancashire Fusiliers.

George is commemorated on the Rangoon Memorial, Myanmar. It bears the names of almost 27,000 men of the Commonwealth land forces who died in the campaigns in Burma and have no known grave. George is named on Face 9.

This is a very special blog, which hopefully is a comprehensive, and permanent record of all our past brave soldiers from Haslingden and Helmshore who lost their lives in either World War One or World War Two.

The research and compilation has been carried out by Jacqueline Ramsbottom of Haslingden Roots in conjunction with Bryan Yorke of Haslingden Old and New who has been responsible for the typing from newspaper transcript of WW1 soldiers and the site construction and day to day administration of the site etc.

If you have information or photos you would like added to the blog then contact Jackie at: Jax1956@googlemail.com

Or if you have any queries with regards to text errors, or site construction etc., then please contact Bryan at: bryan.yorke@sky.com

We are indebted to the late William Turner who did so much research on these brave soldiers and we are so grateful that his previous work has been allowed to be incorporated within this more recent work.

Also we would like to thank Jennifer Shilliday for kindly allowing us to use her superb photo of the Haslingden Memorial for our main header and also as a sub header on most of the soldiers individual reports.

We also wish to acknowledge that the Census Certificates printed below each soldier are "Crown Copyright".

We also thank and acknowledge the photos and inscriptions of the war memorials which wherever possible have been included at the end of each soldier's blog, and some of these photos are copyrighted to the "Commonwealth War Graves Commission". (We are hoping to add these photos in due course)

A lot of the research which has included Notes and also Memorials has been gained from transcripts or notices taken from the original Haslingden Guardian newspaper from that period.

My apologies for typo errors which will have occurred throughout the listings and are being corrected when found during regular audits.

You can just simply scroll down the main blog page on the right hand side and every now and again you will need to click on where it says "older post" or you can shortcut direct to the soldier by clicking over the soldiers name above to bring up their individual page

for the following click over the name and then scroll down until you reached the subject of your choice